How to Make Fish Pangat

An Ed Sheeran song was stuck in my head. It was playing on the radio while Dennis drove me to the airport. The midnight flight from San Francisco to Taipei was on time. In Taipei, I would have to wait nearly three hours for my connection to Manila. I hardly had enough rest because of [...]

A montage of old, black and white photographs of immigrant families arriving on Ellis Island is playing on the screen. I’m sitting in the Paramount Theater in downtown Oakland on a Wednesday morning in September. The theater is packed. I’m one of the nine hundred fifty one immigrants from ninety one countries taking the [...]

The dirt underneath my feet was damp. The roof of the hen house was damp. The table where I left the trowel was damp. It was the first time after a long time the garden had a good soak, a much needed soak. It started to rain the night before while we were asleep. It [...]

Am I the only one who thinks merienda [mehr-yen-dah] is terribly underappreciated? It is a meal often missed like almusal, or breakfast on rushed mornings. Merienda is often overlooked. We obsessively prepare for and plan around tanghalian, [tang-ha-lee-ahn] or lunch, and hapunan, [ha-poo-nahn] or supper but more often than not we forget about the meal [...]

I live for weekends nowadays. I live for my prized free time. I look forward all week to unhurried mornings when I can stay in bed a little longer, when I can savor my cup of coffee a while longer. I look forward to mornings when the only pressing task at hand is figuring out [...]

The light was beautiful. The sun peered through the limbs of our old oak tree casting a mosaic-like shadow. Dennis stood under it in his pressed navy blue suit and green tie I picked out for him. Tears welled up in my eyes as I walked along the carved path. My mother walked beside me, [...]

I found a letter in my inbox the other day from someone in Melbourne, Australia who had just discovered my blog.

“I love your blog,” Maria wrote. “It’s homey, practical, intelligent and still very Filipino. It’s writing like this that can take Filipino cuisine into the mainstream, which sadly it isn’t yet in Australia.”

I could smell garlic in my breath, which I didn’t mind. When you’re ten years old you don’t obsess about such things. Besides, I felt like I was on top of the world, on the front seat of a jeepney flying at full speed with the cold wind against my face and the taste of [...]

I could hear nothing but the clinking of the spoon against the glass. The sound filled the kitchen as much as the heat of the afternoon did. A strength-sapping kind of heat. I stirred in a spoonful of sugar then added cubes of ice. The clinking continued. Spoon against the ice. Ice against the glass.

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Jun Belen is the voice behind Jun-blog, a mouthwatering and heart-warming journal of Filipino home cooking nominated for Best Culinary Blog by the IACP. Subscribe to Jun-Blog and receive new posts by email.

ABOUT

Jun Belen is the voice behind IACP Best Culinary Blog nominee, Jun-blog, a mouthwatering and heartwarming journal of Filipino home cooking. The International Association of Culinary Professionals (IACP) named Jun-blog a finalist for Best Culinary Blog in its 2013 Food Writing Awards. Jun-blog has been featured in the Diner’s Journal of the Food and Dining Section of The New York Times, the San Francisco Chronicle, the Philippines’ Food Magazine, and Australia’s Feast Magazine. The blog is a three-time finalist for Best Regional Cuisine Blog in Saveur Magazine’s Annual Best Food Blog Awards in 2013, 2012 and 2011. His work as photographer and blogger has been mentioned in Saveur Magazine’s “the Best of the Web”, Cooking Channel’s "Eat Street", Los Angeles’ KCRW Good Food, The Huffington Post's Kitchen Daily, San Francisco’s Inside Scoop, San Francisco’s SF Weekly, and food sites like Chow Gojee, Gourmet Live, Foodista, Food News Journal, and the Kitchn.

Memories

"Their last thoughts are of childhood friends, of parents long dead, old loves, of familiar songs and dances, odors of home like sweat and sun on brown skin or scent of calamondin fruit and fresh papaya blossoms."